“Who? James Brown? He ain’t no fucking saint.”
“He’s the godfather of soul. Close enough.” Charles ripped the cover off the magazine.
A little yellow Honda two-seater eased out of the bay. Sal strained to make out the driver, but he couldn’t see through the glare in the windshield. Shit. Charles was holding out the picture of James Brown.
Sal snapped it out of his hand. “All right, all right. You win.”
“Molto benny.” Charles smiled and showed all his teeth.
“Gimme the knife. Hurry up.” Sal looked all around to see who was near the car before he pulled out his gun and held it in the shadows under the dashboard. He took the knife from Charles and unfolded it. “Gimme your finger.” Sal squeezed the tip of Charles’s index finger, looked around again, then jabbed it with the knife.
“Oooww!”
“Shut up. This is sacred.” Sal pulled Charles’s hand out of the shadows. “You see this blood?” It was blue in the neon light. “This means we’re family now.”
Sal swallowed. A nigger wiseguy. Mistretta must be spinning in his grave now.
He held the knife and the gun together in his other hand. He didn’t dare take them out of the shadows. “You see these? From now on you live by the gun and the knife, and you die by the gun and the knife.”
Sal laid the weapons down on the rubber mat and picked up the picture of Charles’s saint. He held Charles’s bloody finger over it. You were supposed to make a cross in blood, but that didn’t seem right under the circumstances, so instead Sal traced an X with Charles’s finger. James Brown had a wet blue X over his face. Sal hoped to Christ this bastard didn’t have AIDS.
He pushed in the cigarette lighter then.
“It don’t work,” Charles said.
“You gotta match?”
“I dunno.” Charles started looking on the floor. “I quit smoking for New Year’s.”
“You’re supposed to burn the saint.”
“Yeah, I know…” Charles felt around under his seat.
A maroon Subaru wagon pulled out of the garage. “All right, never mind. Forget about it. That part’s not important.” Sal crumpled up the picture and threw it on the floor. He couldn’t believe he’d actually done this. He just made a moolinyam.
“Now listen, Charles, we got just two rules, and you must never disobey them. First, you must never ever ever tell anybody family secrets.”
“What secrets?”
“Any secrets that another made guy might tell you in the future.”
“Oh … Don’t I get no instruction book or nothing?”
Sal’s stomach screamed. “No, there’s no friggin’ book. If someone in the family tells you a secret, he’ll tell you it’s a secret and then you’ll know. Okay? You got it?”
“Got it. Now, what’s the second thing?”
“The second thing is you’re not allowed to screw around with another made guy’s wife. You understand? That’s a no-no.”
Charles nodded. “Okay.”
“All right, now you’re a made guy. Congratulations. Now start the car.”
“That’s it? That ain’t much of a ceremony, Sal. Ain’t you s’posed to kiss me or something like that?”
A limo pulled into the parking garage. Sal’s hands were trembling. “No, Charles. If I kiss you, that means I’m gonna kill you.”
“Oh.”
“Now start the goddamn car.”
A red Toyota Celica zipped out of the garage.
“C’mon!”
“Chill out, Sal.” Charles stuck the key in the ignition and turned the engine over.
Sal wanted to break his friggin’ neck, he was moving so slow, but instead he jammed his freezing fingers under his armpits and held his tongue.
A black Jeep Cherokee with pink windshield wipers and ski racks on the roof emerged from the parking garage.
Charles put it in gear. “That’s her.” He looked in his side mirror and cut in front of the next car coming up Bleecker Street. There was only a cab between them and the black Cherokee as they cruised down Bleecker. The Cherokee turned left at LaGuardia Place, heading uptown.
Sal’s gut was in agony. He’d just thought of something. “How do you know she’s going to see Tozzi? How do you know she’s not just going home?”
Charles grinned like a wiseass chimp. “Because she lives in that building over the garage.”
Sal clenched his fists, but he didn’t say a word.
“By the way, Sal, can I still call you Sal, or do I have to call you ‘boss’ now?”
Sal shut his eyes and pressed his forearm into his aching gut. “Just watch the friggin’ road, will ya?”
Chapter 13
Tozzi scanned the bleachers around him. They were filled with wives and kids, girlfriends, a few boyfriends, some parents. The room was huge, two basketball courts side by side with their nets folded up out of the way, the ceiling at least two stories high. The lights in the gym were bright but not harsh, illuminating the small army of people down on the gym floor in their white gi uniforms sitting seiza on their knees, arranged by rank—white belts, then orange belts, then blue, then brown. The black belts in their black hakama skirt pants outlined the near edge of the mat. High-ranking black belts, third and fourth dan level, sat seiza in three corners of the open space, watching like referees. In the near left-hand corner, Sensei sat on a folding chair with his hands on his thighs. He was here from Japan to instruct and oversee testing, which he did only twice a year. To progress beyond blue belt in aikido, you had to test before Sensei.
Tozzi pretended to be watching what was going on down on the mat, but he was actually looking sideways at Stacy sitting next to him. She was really getting into this, which surprised him. Most of the people he’d taken to aikido testing in the past got bored after a while, but she was riveted, clenching her fists, pounding her thighs, biting her lip, rooting for the candidates as they tested. But he was a little disappointed that she was getting into it so much because, to be honest, he was a little jealous. She was getting all excited for all these other guys who were testing. He would’ve been down there testing for black belt right now if he hadn’t been shot. She could’ve been getting all excited over him. He glanced down at his crotch and frowned. He wished he could get all excited over her.
He’d been trying not to think about it, but his problem wasn’t getting any better. His dick was shot. It was depressed, lethargic, lazy, something. Maybe he got bit in the pecker by a tsetse fly. But it wasn’t funny, and he was really starting to worry. He’d sworn he’d never go to a doctor about something like this, but now he was beginning to think he’d better. Christ, if being with Stacy couldn’t make him stiff, what could?
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her watching the action on the mat, and he caught himself frowning. His buddy John was down there testing now. It was his shodan test, the big one, the first degree in the black-belt ranks. Until you reach shodan, you’re considered only a guest on the mat. Your real study begins with black belt. It took Tozzi and John five years to get to this point, but Tozzi was going to have to wait another six months until Sensei came for his next visit. He was happy for John—he really was—but he also felt that he was being left behind, that he was missing the boat, and these feelings put a cloud over what should have been happiness for his friend. It bothered him that he was being so self-centered.
On the mat, John was doing bokken kata, formal movement with the wooden practice sword. He’d just finished going through the formal techniques with a partner. The last part of the test, the part everyone looked forward to, was coming up next. It was the part you worried about most when you were testing: randori, free-style, five attackers against one.
Stacy leaned toward Tozzi and whispered, “John really looks good, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah … he does.”
Tozzi glanced at her sideways. How would she know good aikido from bad? She�
�d never seen it before tonight.
John finished his kata and handed his bokken to one of the black belts on the sidelines. He was then instructed to sit seiza in the middle of the mat by himself while Sensei selected the ukes for his test, the five guys who would be attacking him. Four black belts volunteered immediately and were all accepted by Sensei. The fifth was hand-picked: a first kyu brown belt from one of the upstate New York dojos. He was about six-three, full beard, very lean and muscular, athletic-looking, a running-back type. Sensei liked to use him for testing because of his speed and size. This guy tended to add a little extra drama to the event.
The five attackers lined up and sat seiza shoulder to shoulder facing John about twenty feet away.
Stacy wrapped her arm around Tozzi’s. “I don’t know if I want to watch this.”
“Why not?”
“What if he gets hurt?”
“He won’t get hurt.”
Bodies had been flying around all night long. All of a sudden she was worried someone was gonna get hurt. Tozzi studied her slanted brows. He thought she didn’t like John.
He looked down at the mat. The crowd was still, but you could feel the contained excitement. All eyes were on John, waiting for him to bow to his attackers and start the randori. The room was silent except for a couple of nudgy kids climbing over the bleachers. Finally John bowed. The five attackers jumped to their feet and charged.
“Yikes!” Stacy dug her nails into Tozzi’s forearm.
John was on his feet, waiting for his attackers to come to him, playing it smart and waiting, waiting. Just as the group was about to converge on him, he moved to his left and singled out the guy on the far end of the line who was coming at him with a yokomen attack, using the blade of his hand like a hatchet aimed at John’s head. John ducked under the guy’s arm as he swung and popped up behind his back, pulling him down by the shoulders onto his back.
The crowd cheered.
The next guy came at John with a tsuki, a punch to the gut. John deflected the oncoming punch to the side and again moved behind the attacker to pull him down by the shoulders.
The crowd yelled.
The third attacker came up fast with a shomen attack, the blade of the hand coming straight down toward the crown of John’s head. John moved out of the way and let the hand whiz past his face so he could catch it down at belt level, then he pumped it once to get the guy’s balance and threw him forward over his head, a clean “sledgehammer” kokyu nage that sent the attacker flying across the mat.
People down on the mat clapped and shouted. Throwing an attacker far away gave you a little more time to breathe because it took the guy that much longer to get up and come at you again. Tozzi was impressed. John was looking good down there.
The fourth guy moved in with a left-handed shomen attack, but John was quick. He moved into the guy’s space and intercepted the attacking arm while it was still high in the air and turned the guy right around, keeping control of that arm and leading him down on his belly with a commanding ikkyo response.
Tozzi was very impressed. John wasn’t falling into the trap most people fall into, letting the attackers gang up on his back, forcing him to fight his way out. John wasn’t letting himself get caught, turning as soon as he threw to face the next attacker. And he was mixing up his techniques nicely. It was the kind of randori Tozzi liked to visualize when he thought about testing.
Down on the mat, the big brown belt rushed up and reached out to grab John by the lapels with both hands, but John moved with the attack, not letting the big guy get a grip on him, guiding his outstretched arms until his balance was committed, then pushed off one elbow and threw from the hip, sending the big guy tumbling headfirst onto the mat.
Stacy kept squeezing his arm. “Way to go, John!”
Tozzi looked at her, then glanced down at his crotch. Yeah … way to go.
One of the black belts came back at John with a punch, and John responded with a nice kote gaeshi, spinning away from the punch and controlling the arm, leading the attacker forward in order to take his balance, then trapping the hand back over the wrist and pointing the fingers to the mat behind the attacker’s head, forcing him to fall backward.
The attacks started getting wild and unfocused with more two-hand lunges for the shoulders, but John kept his cool, tossing them off his hip one after the other, alternating right and left. Then the big brown belt came back. He paused for a second and gave John a funny little smile, warming up for something, like a bull staring down the matador before the charge.
Suddenly the brown belt stepped forward and launched his attack, a geri, a forward kick aimed at John’s chest. The sight was frightening. Given their height difference, it looked like John was gonna take it right in the face. The brown belt was like a big evil tree breaking out of the ground and going berserk. But John didn’t flinch. He calmly stepped in as he moved to the side, tapping the big guy’s raised leg to unsettle his mind as he passed, then slipped behind him and pulled him down by the shoulders.
“Did you see that?” Stacy screamed. “I can’t believe it!”
Tozzi was impressed, too, but not for the same reason Stacy was. He knew the kind of damaging throw John could’ve done with that attack—grabbing his foot and shoving him back onto his tailbone, leaving him virtually no opportunity to cushion the fall. John had been charitable enough not to opt for the killer throw even though it would’ve been more efficient for himself. Tozzi was ashamed to admit that the killer throw was the first thing that came to mind as soon as he saw the kick coming. If it were him down there, he wouldn’t have been so nice. It said a lot about his frame of mind. The object of aikido is to neutralize the attacker, not decimate him. Maybe he wasn’t ready to test yet after all.
The attackers kept coming, and for the most part John kept them all at bay. The test was only a couple of minutes long, but it felt interminable when you were in the middle of it. The attackers were getting tired because they were doing all the running, so inevitably the attacks started getting sloppy. But John was getting tired, too, and he wasn’t throwing them away as much as he would’ve liked to. The crowd shouted to him, encouraged him to keep turning, but the attackers swarmed and he fell into the trap. All five panting attackers clustered on his back, each one holding a fistful or two of John’s gi jacket.
With pain and strain in his face, John mustered his ki and walked forward with the load on his back, got them moving, then bowed down and dropped to one knee, putting his head almost to the mat. All five flew over John’s head in unison and tumbled forward like runaway hubcaps.
Stacy was bouncing in her seat, cheering John on.
Tozzi looked down at her heaving cleavage and chewed the inside of his lip. That wasn’t exactly a real throw. Two of those guys were just being nice. He shifted in his seat to create some friction against his sleeping wiener.
The attackers were exhausted now, and their attacks were getting wimpy, which made doing real throws very difficult. Aikido techniques depend on committed, energetic attacks so that you can use the attacker’s momentum against him. John dispensed with a few weak yokomen attacks with in-close kokyu nage throws, and Tozzi could see that Sensei in the corner was about to call for the end of the test. But all of a sudden the big brown belt circled back, and it looked like he’d found his second wind.
The brown belt shuffled his feet like a linebacker as he waited for the other attackers to get out of the way. When he saw an opening, he charged, arm raised high, going for John’s head with a shomen attack. John was exhausted, and he didn’t see the brown belt coming. That big meaty hand was gonna bop him right over the head. But then at the last second, John spotted the attack coming, and he quickly slid back a step to make some space for himself. The big guy’s hand slashed down in front of John, and he caught it but kept it moving, sending it to the side and raising the guy’s arm high enough so that he could duck under it. Suddenly John had the big brown belt’s open hand
locked in a sankyo grip, one hand controlling his fingers, the other around his palm, elbow pointed up and level with the shoulder. It was an effective hold. The slightest twist on John’s part would send excruciating pain up the guy’s arm. It was a great way to get someone bigger than you to move. Tozzi grinned on one side of his face as he imagined himself moving Sal Immordino with a sankyo hold.
The crowd on the mat knew what was coming next, and they started going crazy, “Throw him away! Throw him away!” John was already cranking the guy’s arm, forcing him to back-step in order to alleviate the pain. When John had him extended as far back as he needed, he switched directions and led the brown belt forward, casting his arm as if it were a fly rod. The big guy flew forward, left the ground and sailed over the mat like a 747 coming in for a landing. He rolled over one shoulder, crashing to the mat, and slid a good six feet into the assembly on the edge of the mat, scattering the front row of orange belts.
Sensei signaled the end of the test, and the black belt assisting him yelled “Ai-okay!” to call off the attackers. He had to repeat it several times, though, because the roar of the crowd was rocking the gym in the wake of John’s last throw. When they finally realized it was over, the attackers went over to John to shake his hand and congratulate him.
“You’ve completed your test,” Sensei’s assistant announced.
The crowd cheered and clapped. The big brown belt was patting John on the back as they got off the mat. John was dripping with sweat and his face was a little pale, but his expression was a beautiful mixture of relief, exhaustion, joy, and wisdom gained.
“That was incredible. He’s great.” Stacy flipped her hair over her shoulder, still applauding.
“Yeah, I know. He is good.” Tozzi was trying to be enthused, but he was afraid he sounded flat and phony. He really wanted to be down there testing, getting pumped for it, doing it, taking the challenge. He had a feeling that if he could only test and take on a randori attack, it would get his juices flowing again and perk him right up. He’d be radiating with positive energy, ki shooting out of every part of him. Including the part between his legs.
5 Bad Moon Page 16